AvengerDr
Novice
- Joined
- Jun 23, 2007
- Messages
- 15
During the development of your game I assume that at a certain point you had to implement methods and algorithms to automate random NPC stat generation, combat computations and other "common" tasks. You had to develop your own rule system for that purpose. I was wondering: if some sort of "AD&D++" or "GURPS#" library was available that you could use in your code, would you have used that instead of developing your onw system?
I was asking myself that because for my future 4x space strategy game that I'm developing, sooner or later I'll have to develop some sort of RPG-like rule system. For example to handle combat between spaceships I could either use a heartless approach and use rays, intersections, inertial momentum, collisions and compute combat results in that way or use a more "humane" approach and leave it to the pilot's "dogfighting" skill: nothing that a dice roll can't solve. I also like to have each spaceship have a randomly generated NPC pilot, whose stat will be used in combat. Pilots who gain so much experience behind the scenes could be "promoted" to "special" NPCs as those in Moo2 or Rome Total War, that you could then use as governors.
Anyway back to my original question. To handle that, I'll have to develop my own rule system, and although I'd have used a "GURPS#" library if it were available freely, I'll have to develop my own system. So I was interested to know from you "indie" developers if, some sort of such library (that offered classes to handle NPC generation, combat resolution and so on), publicly available, existed, would you consider using it?
The library as I envision it would have multiple modules, like sourcebooks. There could be specialized DLLs to handle space combat, others to handle modern ranged combat, fantasy ones and so on.
One point to be made is that obviously every game handles combat in its very own way. In fact I don't mean for the library to have algorithms to resolve combat on its own, just algorithms to check whether a character can "hit" another depending on its stat. The equivalent of a THAC0 computation for example. It would be you who decide where and when to use that function call.
I'd obviously be tempted to answer "No, I'd prefer to make my own rule system", but that may be time consuming, and as I said, if a GURPS# (I'm a GURPS and C# enthusiast as you have imagined :D) were available I'd use that, both for "brand recognition" and for the fact that I could be able to concentrate more on the game itself without having to spend time to balance a rule system that I can already assume to be as good as it can get.
I'm sure that a community effort could design a good computer-usable rule system and who knows, maybe even gain sufficient recognition to be used in some new indie projects.
What is your opinion on this idea?
I was asking myself that because for my future 4x space strategy game that I'm developing, sooner or later I'll have to develop some sort of RPG-like rule system. For example to handle combat between spaceships I could either use a heartless approach and use rays, intersections, inertial momentum, collisions and compute combat results in that way or use a more "humane" approach and leave it to the pilot's "dogfighting" skill: nothing that a dice roll can't solve. I also like to have each spaceship have a randomly generated NPC pilot, whose stat will be used in combat. Pilots who gain so much experience behind the scenes could be "promoted" to "special" NPCs as those in Moo2 or Rome Total War, that you could then use as governors.
Anyway back to my original question. To handle that, I'll have to develop my own rule system, and although I'd have used a "GURPS#" library if it were available freely, I'll have to develop my own system. So I was interested to know from you "indie" developers if, some sort of such library (that offered classes to handle NPC generation, combat resolution and so on), publicly available, existed, would you consider using it?
The library as I envision it would have multiple modules, like sourcebooks. There could be specialized DLLs to handle space combat, others to handle modern ranged combat, fantasy ones and so on.
One point to be made is that obviously every game handles combat in its very own way. In fact I don't mean for the library to have algorithms to resolve combat on its own, just algorithms to check whether a character can "hit" another depending on its stat. The equivalent of a THAC0 computation for example. It would be you who decide where and when to use that function call.
I'd obviously be tempted to answer "No, I'd prefer to make my own rule system", but that may be time consuming, and as I said, if a GURPS# (I'm a GURPS and C# enthusiast as you have imagined :D) were available I'd use that, both for "brand recognition" and for the fact that I could be able to concentrate more on the game itself without having to spend time to balance a rule system that I can already assume to be as good as it can get.
I'm sure that a community effort could design a good computer-usable rule system and who knows, maybe even gain sufficient recognition to be used in some new indie projects.
What is your opinion on this idea?